Mama, Nadezhda Alliluyeva (Svetlana took her mother’s family name after Joseph died), was emotionally distant and, when Svetlana was 6, fatally shot herself in the heart. Architect of the nation’s “Great Terror,” Stalin even snooped on his only daughter, starting when she was a teen. Those imprisoned or killed included members of Svetlana’s extended family. Soviet tyrant Joseph Stalin, was responsible for the deaths of between 20 and 60 million of his countrymen in labour camps - the dreaded Gulag - and from starvation and executions. Poet Philip Larkin’s oft-quoted line, “They f- you up, your mum and dad,” applies to many of us, but it’s hard to imagine a life more harmed by parentally bestowed horrors than that of Svetlana Alliluyeva.
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